Chapter III: Popular Acceptance

For the history of Catholicism since the seventeenth century consult Mosheim and Neander, also the History of the Fall of the Jesuits, by Count A. de Saint-Priest (Eng. tr. 1845), and Mr. Joseph McCabe's The Decay of the Church of Rome (1909). There is an extensive literature on the controversy between Anglicanism and Catholicism in the middle of the nineteenth century, following on the Tractarian movement, as to the latest phases of which see the Secret History of the Oxford Movement, by Walter Walsh. For references as to recent developments in Protestant and other countries see again the author's Short History of Freethought and Mr. Benn's full record of the nineteenth century. The fortunes of Greek Christianity may be traced through Finlay. Compare Villemain, Essai sur l'état des Grecs depuis la conquête musulmane, in his Études d'histoire moderne (nouv. ed. 1846). Concerning the state of religion in modern Russia, see Wallace's Russia. As to missions in general, see the able and comprehensive survey, Foreign Missions, by C. Cohen (Freethought Publishing Company), and A Chinese Appeal to Christendom Concerning Christian Missions (R.P.A., 1912). The existing situation as between Christianity and rationalism is well set forth in Philip Vivian's The Churches and Modern Thought (R.P.A., 1911).

NOTES

[1] Subsequently, on other lines, in the volume entitled Pagan Christs.

[2] Comparative Religion, by J. Estlin Carpenter; "Home University Library," 1912, end.

[3] See Pagan Christs, 2nd ed. Pt. II, ch. ii, §§ 15-16.

[4] The thesis that the epistles are all supposititious is ably sustained by Van Manen in the Encyclopædia Biblica. See his positions well summarised by Mr. T. Whittaker, The Origins of Christianity (R. P. A.).

[5] The point is discussed in Pagan Christs, 2nd ed. Pt. II, ch. i, § 10.

[6] See Wladimir Lessevich, La Légende de Jesus et les traditions populaires, 1903. (Ext. de la Revue Internationale de Sociologie.)

[7] See Pagan Christs, 2nd ed. Pt. II, ch. i, §§ 7-12.

[8] See Christianity and Mythology, 2nd ed. p. 209; Pagan Christs, 2nd ed. p. 143.

[9] See Christianity and Mythology, 2nd ed., p. 396 and refs.

[10] See Christianity and Mythology, 2nd ed. Pt. III, Div. i, § 29.

[11] See Christianity and Mythology, 2nd ed. Pt. III, Div. i, § 10.

[12] Id. ib. § 5.

[13] See Christianity and Mythology, 2nd ed. Pt. III, Div. i, § 3.

[14] Id. p. 367; Pagan Christs, 2nd ed. p. 145.

[15] See Pagan Christs, 2nd ed. Pt. II, ch. ii, §§ 2-3.

[16] Luke xvii, 7-10 (Gr. "Servant" is a wilful mistranslation: the word is "slave").

[17] See Miss Harrison's Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 2nd ed. pp. 413-425.

[18] A myth of verbal misunderstanding. The original titanoi were "white-clay-men," men with whitened faces, after the fashion of so many mystic mummeries among savages. (Work cited, p. 493.)

[19] This also derives from a primitive concept of a Beer-God. See Miss Harrison, as cited, p. 419.

[20] See "Mithraism" in Pagan Christs, 2nd ed. Pt. III, p. 327 sq.

[21] See on the whole subject Christianity and Mythology, 2nd ed. p. 403 sq.

[22] Compare the Second Epistle of John, v. 7, as to the "many deceivers" who "confess not that Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh."

[23] As to Montanus, see Montanus and the Primitive Church, Hulsean Prize Essay, by John De Soyres, 1878.

[24] Realism derived from the doctrine, ascribed to Plato by Aristotle, that "universals," the ideas of species, etc., exist independently of individual objects, and existed before them. This is "Extreme Realism," put in the formula, universalia ante rem. Nominalism was the doctrine that only individuals have real existence, and that ideas of species are but names. There was an intermediate position, that of Aristotle, that universals exist in individual objects--universalia in re. This, known as Moderate Realism, is but a verbal compromise, which does not concede the Realist claim. The motive for that lay in the religious bias to claim for ideas, or "spiritual" concepts, a higher validity and reality than it accords to "material" things. The same tendency expressed itself in the Moslem doctrine that the Koran is uncreated and eternal.

[25] See the author's Short History of Freethought, 2nd ed. ii, 34 sq.: and Montaigne and Shakespeare, 2nd ed. pp. 191, 196, 198 sq.

[26] This was written in 1901. It holds equally true in 1913.

[27] I.e., the South African War, in 1901.

[28] A beginning has since been made.

End of Project Gutenberg's A Short History of Christianity, by J. M. Robertson